Monday, 11 June 2007

I don't understand the Maestro credit card ad campaign. I mean those black and white posters with slogans like: 'There's a reason machines spit out coins', 'R.I.50p' and 'Coins Jar'. What are they trying to get us to do? Stop using coins? Coins are really useful! How do Maestro think they're going to brainwash us into not believing coins are useful? Is their advertising agency's dream that one day, I'll fancy a Kit-Kat, and thanks to their clever indoctrination think to myself: 'Oh no, here comes that dreadful and laborious business of getting a fifty pee out of my pocket, and giving it to the man! I can hardly bear the sheer tedium and difficulty of it... Ah, but wait! I've just remembered - Maestro, so I am reliably informed by those helpful posters, is the new cash! No more terrible coin-handing-over ordeal for me - all I have to do is produce my Maestro card, watch the assistant sigh, put it in the chip and pin machine, wait for it to be recognised, no luck, take it out and rub the magnetic strip with the corner of my shirt, put it back in, ah, that's better, enter my pin, wait for that to be recognised, enter it again because I absent-mindedly put in my credit card pin not my debit card pin, wait for it to be recognised.... oh dear, slow connection today... Ah, there we go, take out my card, wait for the reciept, and the Kit-Kat is mine! R.I.50p indeed! Sorry, mate, what was that? Big Issue? Yeah, ok! Where's your chip and pin machine?'

Sounds like the Wage Works cards we have across the pond in America - and they haven't caught on either. I'd rather have my cash in hand thank you, than trust it to some banking institution that might shrivel up and blow away as many have done.